A thief broke into our house!

Just a few minutes ago, I was already asleep. I was reading a book and I felt that I dropped it and realised that I was already asleep. And I was happy, because I napped for at least two hours this afternoon (I was up all night last night because of a super painful dyspepsia/hyperacidity. I was only able to sleep fitfully at 3 a.m. after I begged Randy to microwave my cornbag heatpack and applied it on my stomach). Because of that long nap, I thought I’d have trouble sleeping tonight. But even before midnight struck, my eyes shut.

Then I woke up with this feeling of paranoia. I tried sleeping again, to no avail. I am freaking out, and I want to shout and cry.

See, yesterday was supposed to be a great day. We were to leave Los Banos early to head to Sta. Rosa to attend an End-of-Summer Luau Party at Gymboree, while Randy watches Game 1 of the NBA Finals. I woke up early and took a bath. While I was towelling myself dry, Randy knocked on the bathroom door and told me in a somber voice, “Start (his version of “Sweetheart”), nanakaw ang camera ko. ‘Yung ginagamit ko sa bird photography.”

I went out of the bathroom immediately to see whether he’s serious. Seeing his face, I knew he was. Apparently, he left his camera and camera paraphernalia in his office on the 2nd floor (Good thing he brought his laptop to our bedroom!) He looked so broken, and I knew he was crumbling inside. Randy has always been my rock, but at that time I knew I had to take charge. He was in no mood to do anything about it, so I started to work. I forced him to review the CCTV footage—NOW! (he said he’ll do it later—he was in no mood), and I called the police.

The police came, checked the scene of the crime, and that’s it. We asked whether they could do fingerprinting, they said that we should call the SOCO to do that. I honestly felt that the police were just going through the motions of checking out a place that has just been burglarized. Send them the CCTV footage na lang daw.

Then we checked the CCTV footage. Based on it, the thief entered our vicinity at around 9:30 p.m. He was hiding in the dark part of our lawn armed with a flashlight. Then at 11:30, he started patrolling the stairs—we know because he was flashing his flashlight on the stairs. Then at 1 a.m., he went up the stairs and ransacked Randy’s office. At 1:11 a.m., he was on his way to freedom, with Randy’s camera, lenses, and Ray-ban sunnies tucked in Randy’s new backpack on the thief’s back.

This man broke into our building and went to Randy’s office to steal his Canon 7D Mark II and Tamron 150-600 lens, other camera lenses, his Rayban shades, and then stuffed them all into Randy’s backpack that this thief is wearing. Please help us find this thief. I have more footages, but I can’t open them in my MacBook. We also offer a P25,000 reward to whoever could help us catch this thief and recover Randy’s gadgets

Serial numbers of the camera and lens stolen

Seeing how seemingly easily this thief stole Randy’s beloved things is heartbreaking. When the panghihinayang over Randy’s stuff started wearing off, I started to get angry. I just got so angry that we were so lax when it comes to security. For a long time, our house seemed thief-friendly. To have cool, fresh air 24/7, our french windows were open even at night. We used to have true-blue guard dogs that scared away the thieves, but now our only dog is Drogo, whom Randy wants to keep inside an air-conditioned room! Randy often tells me I’m OA because every now and then I would bug him about locks and other safety precautions. But I was glad that I pushed to forego the convenience of not having anyone open and close our gates and insisted that our gates be locked every night.

I’m so angry and scared right now, I can’t sleep! Without a painful stomach to distract me, I am having trouble accepting the fact that a bad person was only a few meters away from us while we were defenseless and sleeping! I can’t help but replay the events that night, and tweaking each scene.

Tonight I am blogging in our living room in front of the TV set that shows CCTV footage. We got a person to guard our house at night, and the windows are already all closed. I also locked all the doors. But I don’t think you could blame me if I still feel like crying, my heart is still beating very fast, and I’m still scared.

This is a cliche, but still let me say that I’m still grateful nothing bad happened to us. I still thank God that none of us got hurt or threatened during that burglary. I just hope that this burglary will jolt us to take more safety precautions. As my Tita said, THIEVES ARE VERY DARING THESE DAYS. You would think that common sense dictates they wouldn’t dare do this or that, but they still do. Come hell or high water, tuloy ang pagnanakaw!

Let me share with you some ideas to secure our homes from thieves and any criminal intrusions, which I will ensure to employ:

Make sure your windows, sliding doors, backdoors and all doors have sturdy locks. I read that burglars bypass homes that they think are too difficult to breach. And when they have trouble opening, the bigger the chances of their being caught or seen.

Sabihan ka nang matapobre o snub, but don’t open your home to everyone! If you don’t know the people well enough, you are not obliged to let them enter your home. You can talk to them at the gate. Ditto with delivery men—kesehodang mabigatan ka sa pagpasok ng mga bote ng distilled water o gas, ‘yaan mo na kesa makabisa nila ang bahay mo.

Keep your homes and gates well-lighted. Like what I said, we saw that the thief lurked in the part of our yard that was dark. He stayed there until all the activities seemed to cool down. I also read that a well-lit home intimidates intruders because they know that they would be more easily seen.

Buy high quality CCTV cameras, and buy lots of cameras! Burglars often operate at night, so low-quality CCTV cameras would be useless when it’s dark. And put a camera in every corner—you’ll never know where they’ll pass by.

Invest in alarms. There are already lots of good quality alarm systems that can not only protect your homes from intruders but even from fire. Imagine how much alarms can help you—in the quiet of the night when an intruder opens your door, may magwawalang alarm na gigising sa buong subdivision ninyo!

Guard dogs are gems. In fairness, when we still had “practical dogs” (hindi ‘yung pa-baby show dogs) that tirelessly patrolled our yard and house, and barked their scary barks to anyone who dared to get near the gates at night, no thief dared to enter our yard. Drogo is cute and brought us great honour, but I can’t help but miss our dobermanns.

Our reliable guard dogs once upon a time: Ph. Ch. He-Man and Ph. Ch. Vanguard. They were handsome show dogs who were also excellent guard dogs. Together with another female dobermann (Pepper), they provided us a three-tier protection: one dobermann roaming in the yard (Pepper), one Dobermann on the 2nd floor (Vanguard), and one dobermann on the third floor (He-Man).

Once upon a time…

And of course, pray. I regret that on the night that our house was broken into, I have failed to pray my usual prayer to protect our house recently. I usually sound crazy, but I’ve been doing it because Motherhood taught us to do it when we were young. Basically, I just invoke the name of Jesus and I boldly cast out any evil spirit—I order them to get out of our house then I ask the Lord to cover our whole household with the blood of Jesus. It must be done out loud, with full conviction and faith (READ THIS).

As a matter of fact, it’s probably what I should do now so I could finally have some peace of mind.

Guys, if you have more tips on how to secure our homes, how we can catch the thief or recover Randy’s stuff, I’d be grateful to hear from you.

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Comments

I am so sorry to hear this. Our house is also equipped with a four-camera CCTV (upon the instigation of my elder son). I actually didn’t think it was necessary because our neighbors are just a few meters away from our house, but after reading your sharing, I now realize that there are benefits to be derived.

I have a feeling your household activities were monitored, thus, he knew when to “strike.” May be, you should have more dogs. Good that you now have a security guard at night. Maximize publicity of the CCTV-footage. People might be able to recognize him. I hope you recover all the things he got and he is penalized for it.

And yes I agree, better be paranoid. I’m the one who’s always OA while Randy is more relaxed, to be honest. When this happened, he was really sorry and syempre ni-nag ko siya because he would often tell me OA raw ako.